


風吹くときには君の壁になろう。

by aesterismo



Category: Persona 4
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesterismo/pseuds/aesterismo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love, Souji and Yosuke learn through first hand experience, has little reason for when and why it happens.  It just does.  Title translates to "when the wind blows, I'll be your wall."</p>
            </blockquote>





	風吹くときには君の壁になろう。

“Love at first sight” was hardly the best way to describe them.  
  
It wouldn’t have been right to call it “love at second sight,” either.  Or even love at “third sight.”

Because the first, second, and third time Souji had ever seen Yosuke – and even after that, even after they had exchanged introductions and talked for a short while on the way home after school – he certainly hadn’t fallen in love then.  
  
In fact, the first thing that Souji could recall ever thinking about Yosuke was that he was quite possibly the strangest person Souji had ever met.  
  
Yosuke was every bit your typical teenage boy.

His purposefully tousled hair, the slightest hint of firm muscle forming over skin and bones, and those _eyes_ , as vibrant as an autumn sunset just before it began to disappear beneath the horizon, burning like a torch in its final moments alight with feverous, sparkling life – it all made Yosuke seem almost too brilliant for Souji to feel anything but comfortable in his presence.  
  
And just like a moth, Souji was drawn to Yosuke – his boyish charm, his odd quirks and persistent companionship, all the little things that made him an individual apart from his Shadow – without realizing that they were both getting closer and closer with every step they took together.

* * *

 

Yosuke was everything Souji wasn’t.

Unlike Souji, Yosuke could be brash, naïve, and tactless sometimes.  Before they met, Yosuke couldn’t see past his negative qualities and seemed all too convinced that he couldn’t change himself.

Souji was the first to show Yosuke that he _could_ change if he believed in himself – and the people around him that would always accept him – he could reshape his own world as he liked.

Unlike Souji, Yosuke was something of a loner, preferring to keep to himself than mingle with people he couldn’t relate to.

Before they met, Yosuke rather liked being alone – but it was Souji who taught him that being alone didn’t mean distancing yourself from others and that all _hello_ ’s didn’t always have to end in sad _farewell_ s.  

Unlike Souji, if Yosuke liked something or someone, he put everything into the pursuit of it; if he hated something or someone, it took a lot of persuasion to get him to tolerate being around it.

But it wasn’t until Souji taught him the meaning of reciprocation in relationships – whether they were between the same or the opposite sex or neither – that Yosuke understood that social constructs and majority opinion weren’t the only answers to the Big Questions in life.

So perhaps Yosuke was a tangled web of contradictions: a simple yet complicated boy, an optimistic yet defeated boy.  He was a mess of things, **made** a mess of things, and should have been the kind of person that Souji avoided like the plague.

But instead, he was everything that Souji never knew he needed.

* * *

Sure, Yosuke could be a lot of things.

He was a little slow, a bit reckless, and a touch too sensitive.  He was disorganized to a fault, picky about food and especially about girls.

Of course, Souji had no reason to deny any of these claims.

Sometimes, Yosuke was nothing short of a coward, hiding from the world and from himself.

Sometimes, Yosuke was the bravest person Souji knew, taking mortal blows for him and never asking for anything in return.

But it was almost too _easy_ for Souji to see past all his senseless bravado, see the gentle soul beneath his quick-to-judge and ever-skeptical façade, hear the lingering resonance of his vibrato as he sang English pop hits while he restocked Junes’s aisles late into night to pass the time, and feel the hesitant tug on his sleeve and the eagerness of his sheepish grin when they stopped at the Samegawa to soak their feet in the river.

It was almost too _easy_ for Yosuke to slow down and match Souji’s unhurried gait, for both to fall into the routine of walking each other home and calling each other when they weren’t exchanging text messages (which, if Souji neglected to answer on a particularly busy weekend, eventually led to Yosuke calling him just as the silver-haired boy was finishing his reply), for Yosuke’s slight slouch to rub off on Souji and for Souji’s mannerisms to rub off on Yosuke, until it got to the point where one was able to finish the other’s sentences.

It was _easier_ still to pretend everything meant nothing (calling or texting each other when they couldn’t see each other, thinking of each other when the simplest of things sparked a particular memory, leaning on each other when there were empty chairs or couches that worked just as well and laughing to themselves over stupid little inside jokes), but they were **partners** – equals in every sense of the word, prone to agreements as much as disagreements, perfect foils to one another in character and in theory and very little else – and Souji had gotten to the point couldn’t remember what life was like before he knew Yosuke.

Yosuke, who trusted him with his life, who gave his time and attention to others now more than ever, who thanked him for the smallest of gestures with disarmingly bright smiles and a trademark wink.

Yosuke, who flourished like a well-nourished seed under his partner’s vigilant but gentle care, who told cheesy jokes to cheer him up when he was down, who would do anything to win his friends’ approval.

Yosuke, who said nothing when Souji broke down in front of him for the first time after they left the hospital that dark December night and chose to rebuild the pieces of his shattered conscience and his frazzled nerves and stayed over at his house the night when the world came crashing down, if only to hold him tight while the sobs wracked his burdened body and the guilt gnawed at his insides and his sole comfort – feet pressed close under the futon, foreheads flush, and hands circling the back of his neck absently as warm reassurances traced into the cool skin – was that he hadn’t lost Yosuke, that he would _never_ lose Yosuke, and right then and there, he swore to protect the other boy for as long as they both lived.

It was easy to make promises like that, he realized in the aftermath of it all, when your heart had already made up its mind to love someone that deeply.  And after that night they spent together, Souji knew why he couldn’t imagine a world without Yosuke.

Because over the months they forged a friendship, a partnership, an unbreakable bond together, Yosuke had become his world.


End file.
